Alleged sex assault heads for civil court

Thursday

Aug 29, 2013 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON - The mother of a 9-year-old girl has filed a negligence and battery lawsuit against Manteca Unified School District branching from a reported sexual assault at Lathrop Elementary School last year.

Jennie Rodriguez-Moore

STOCKTON - The mother of a 9-year-old girl has filed a negligence and battery lawsuit against Manteca Unified School District branching from a reported sexual assault at Lathrop Elementary School last year.

Lathrop Police Services has investigated the report of the Aug. 31, 2012, incident, but closed the investigation after the student gave conflicting statements about what had happened.

Following the investigation, the child's mother filed a claim for damages with the school district, and it was later denied.

According to court documents, the student was participating in an afterschool program run by Give Every Child A Chance, a Manteca volunteer tutoring and mentoring program, when the assault occurred.

She was playing a game called "Prisoner" in the school yard when she felt the need to use the restroom, according to the lawsuit. The student, who was then 8 years old, asserted that an unknown man was in the restroom when she went inside. She said the unknown man locked the door and assaulted her. The assault is explicitly described in the civil suit.

The girl's mother is blaming the school for the security breach, as well as program workers who were supposed to be supervising the student.

"The school district and its employees were negligent in managing its premises, negligent in establishing security protocols to prevent molestations from occurring in the girls' restroom and negligent in supervising (the plaintiff child), who was a student under their supervision and control, in several ways," a claim submitted to the district states.

According to the subsequent lawsuit, the school district failed to have sufficient security measures at the time, such as surveillance cameras, which could have captured images of the assailant.

The civil lawsuit says the school should not have had a lock on the inside of the girls' restroom, because it keeps out potential help.

The lawsuit also says employees working in the afterschool program allowed the student to go to the restroom alone and did not follow up when she didn't return quickly to the game she had been playing.

Manteca Unified School District trustees denied a claim the mother filed against the district in February.

The mother countered with the civil lawsuit, filed on behalf of her daughter in San Joaquin County Superior Court on Aug. 12 for an unlimited amount of damages exceeding $25,000.

District Superintendent Jason Messer declined to comment on the case because it is in litigation, adding that he has yet to be served.

Messer did, however, say the district has "always been involved in an ongoing process looking at safety."

The district has since increased surveillance at schools and discussed the monitoring of children with Give Every Child A Chance, Messer said.

"The tools that we continue to use and employ, first off, we do in conjunction with our local law enforcement," Messer said.

Messer said the district oversees 23,000 children in 31 schools in Lathrop, Manteca and Stockton, and works with multiple law enforcement agencies on addressing safety.

"All of those agencies are fantastic when we deal with any situation," he said.

"There is a percentage of reports that are either not true or inaccurate when you're dealing with students at all different ages," he said. "Things they perceive can be very different."

Messer mentioned as an example an incident in which a student reported being stalked. It turned out the person the child was suspicious of actually was a contractor on campus for legitimate business. He was driving a white cargo van and was working on a project at the school.

Dave Bricker, spokesman for Give Every Child A Chance, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Lathrop Police Services investigated the reported bathroom incident last year but closed the case after the student changed her story during the investigation, said Deputy Les Garcia, spokesman for the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office, which contracts with Lathrop for police services. There were no arrests.

The plaintiff's attorney, Stockton-based Joseph W. Nolan, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.